In many ways, Tuesday’s ceremony was a standard corporate pep rally, leaving aside the thundersticks and person walking around in a furry shark costume.  SAP executives Bill McDermott and Jonathan Becher, joined by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, touted the newly renamed SAP Center—or, some might say, The Arena Formerly Known as HP Pavilion—and its potential to improve the company’s profile in Silicon Valley.

The German software company will pay $3.25 million per year to the San Jose Sharks hockey team and city of San Jose, split evenly between the two, for the 20-year-old arena’s naming rights.

It was a celebratory mood for the roughly two thousand SAP employees forced to attend, even if more than a few of them spent the entire ceremony buried in their smartphones. But that, it seems, is part of SAP’s plan.

Flanked by long golden banners bearing SAP’s simple logo, John Tortora, the Sharks’ chief operating officer, promised the crowd that the Sharks would be the “gold standard” for sports entertainment. In partnership with SAP, the team plans to increase in-stadium fan engagement and interaction.

“Wouldn’t it be nice instead of thinking about 17 or 18 thousand people, we thought about one person 18 thousand times?” asked Tortora, who hopes to use SAP’s software solutions to tailor entertainment experiences for individual fans. “So, when you come to the arena, you not only enjoy the product on ice or on stage, but also what’s on your cell phone as well.”

Ironically, the partnership between SAP and the arena is replacing an old one. SAP had sponsored the SAP Open tennis tournament at the arena up until this year. The event drew fewer and fewer people in recent years, and it will now bounce around to different global destinations. SAP co-founder and Sharks majority owner Hasso Plattner said he’s been a Sharks fan since 1993, when the San Jose Arena opened. That year also marked the beginning of the company’s efforts to expand its brand in Silicon Valley.

“Silicon Valley is the heart of innovation in our industry,” Plattner said. “Here is an unbelievable melting pot of people—that is the strength of Silicon Valley and I’m very happy we are a part of that.”

Mayor Reed praised the arena as a centerpiece for local business and culture. “We love the excitement it brings to our downtown,” he said. With money never far from the mayor’s mind, he added: “And it runs at a cash positive to the city, which you can’t say about many public buildings.”

Mentions of the Sharks drew the ceremony’s biggest cheers, which could suggest that most fans will continue to call the arena what it’s always informally been—the Shark Tank.